Emergent Research

EMERGENT RESEARCH is focused on better understanding the small business sector of the US and global economy.

Authors

The authors are Steve King and Carolyn Ockels. Steve and Carolyn are partners at Emergent Research and Senior Fellows at the Society for New Communications Research. Carolyn is leading the coworking study and Steve is a member of the project team.

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Emergent Research works with corporate, government and non-profit clients. When we reference organizations that have provided us funding in the last year we will note it.
If we mention a product or service that we received for free or other considerations, we will note it.

Assistant Edge

April 18, 2012

Home is Where the Startup Is (For Now)

The Kaufman Foundation and LegalZoom have teamed up to produce a quarterly Startup Confidence Index. The goal of the index is to measure how much confidence startups have in their business and the economy.

Their most recent survey shows that 53% of startups are home-based. This is consistent with other studies on both startups and small businesses. For example, the Rise of the Homepreneur study from Network Solution and us showed that a bit over 50% of small businesses are home-based.

Independent workers (freelancers, contractors, etc.) also tend to be home-based. The MBO State of Independence study shows that 34% of all independents work primarily from home and the vast majority work from home part of the time. The other major primary work location for independents is client sites.

This data comes as no surprise, but confirms that today home is where most startups and small businesses start and stay.

We do think this is starting to shift as more startups and small businesses discover the advantages of coworking and other shared workspaces. But this shift is just starting and still years away from the mainstream.

So now there’s CasaHop to facilitate the process. For now, the team is looking to push out product early and iterate along the way. It’s still early on, but the startup is already looking to add new features. While the site is mostly focused on connecting people with each other to exchange homes now, Berry said the team is looking to roll out travel clubs and build more community features for the site.